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Wondering how the new Inscription tradeskill will affect Druids in Wrath of the Lich King? View the full list of currently available and datamined Glyphs for Balance, Feral, and Restoration Druids here!

I haven’t been documenting the recent commentary and Blue posts related to powershifting, so to catch you up to speed, here is a quick summary:

Powershifting was an unintentional game mechanic whereby a Feral Druid at 0 Energy would shift out of Cat Form and back in to gain the 40 Energy from Furor. The ability to do this was limited by the Feral Druid’s mana pool, of course, but it was a common tactic in both PvE and, to a limited extent, PvP. « Source »

The change to Energy so that it refills “smoothly” rather than in ticks eliminated the ability to gain an occasional extra “free” tick of Energy depending upon when you triggered a skill.

A change was made to allow Energy to continue regenerating while outside of Cat Form. The original intention was for the amount of Energy to cap out at 40 with 5/5 Furor, but as a result of a bug, it capped out at 100. This explains Runycat’s comments last night about being able to shift into Cat Form with full Energy. « Source »

Furor has subsequently been changed to have the following effect:

Gives you 100% chance to gain 10 Rage when you shapeshift into Bear and Dire Bear Form, and you keep up to 100 of your Energy when you shapeshift into Cat Form, and increases your total Intellect while in Moonkin form by 10%.

This means that with 5/5 Furor you will no longer lose Energy from leaving Cat Form and will continue to regenerate Energy as if you had remained in form. « Source » I asked well-known artist and Feral Druid Andrige for his thoughts on this change:

With this change Ferals will no longer have to count on the fairly unreliable and unintended mechanic of the design of Furor. Instead, Ferals suddenly got a boost when it comes to versatility between forms at the loss of the “powershifting” mechanic. This change comes at the cost of PvE where this mechanic was a lifesaver (all Ferals who play seriously should know that), but I believe tweaking the proc rate of Omen of Clarityand the cooldown of Tiger’s Fury could make up for it.

Some Druids have clamored that this change will be a substantial nerf to their PvE viability, including Beta Tester Odz who writes:

Furor was always a PvP talent that a PvE Feral could make use of through powershifting. Moonkins complained that there was nothing for them in the first tier of Resto to get as they worked their way toward Omen of Clarity so now you’ve changed Furor to help them but left PvE ferals out in the cold because there is NOTHING in the first tier I would take. Devs just seem to band-aid everything and create more problems as they go along instead of fixing the main issue which Feral and Balance Druids having to invest ANY points at all into the Resto tree to be viable.

Let’s see what this talent has now become shall we:

It’s now mainly a Moonkin talent as they get the most benefit from it.

This slightly fixes the fact that Devs broke the talent and what [Ferals] end up with now is a consolation prize which will greatly reduce PvP burst potential as Energy is no longer on-demand below 40 Energy.

A PvE feral druid who wants OoC and Master Shapeshifter will have nothing in T1 of Restoration to take –only Naturalist in T2 – but will be forced to take Natural Shapeshifter, a talent which could have been justified if powershifting were still in the game but is now dead weight just to get to Master Shapshifter.

I don’t see this getting any better as long as you don’t address the core problems inherent with having to invest any points in Resto to begin with.

I’d love to hear from Feral readers (and anyone else, of course) about how you feel this change will affect you, both in PvE and PvP.

Balance Druids are celebrating this change as it provides a much more attractive way to spend five points in Tier 1 of Restoration. Of course, this means that buffing Gift of the Wild will more than likely fall solely upon the shoulders (boughs?) of Restoration Druids, but let’s try to look on the bright side. Apparently, it’s possible to pick up Omen of Clarity without spending five points in T2 of Restoration, so Balance Druids can continue to help us buff. My mistake!

12 Comments

This is a good change for moonkin. However, I think we will still help you buff. I will probably put 2 points in Imp MOTW, 5 in Furor, 3 in Natural Shapeshifter, 3 in Intensity, 1 in OOC, and two in Master Shapeshifter. The other available talents don’t really have anything for moonkin.

I never liked power-shifting. It felt dirty. From my standpoint is was one more thing to worry about. I think the trees are the trees and they can’t be perfect. We are very lucky as ferals to get a fully functional tank and DPS out of speccing into one tree. 11 points in another tree doesn’t bother me at all. New MotW is a bargain for two points. And who doesn’t play PvP at least a little? For another 5 points, we get cat increased crit 2% and 30% mana reduction on shifting- sounds good to me!

In all honesty, this is a change I’m not worried about. Although powershifting did let us squeeze out a little extra damage, it’s a tricky beast to get right, and it’s one less thing to worry about now. Right now in beta though, my timing feels very strange, largely because I’m used to seeing energy tick in cycles, and now it just keeps chugging and charging (and I can also use Tiger’s Fury for an extra 60). It’s weird, but not necessarily bad. Feels a little more button-mashing-y, but not terrible.

I agree with Runnycat…Powershifting was almost too much trouble to get right. And I think the reason why so many Ferals are up in arms is that they are not taking the new way energy will “flow” into account. Watching beta videos and reading blogs it is my understanding that energy truly does flow; where even if you run out energy it regens so evenly you quickly gain enough for another attack..and any “TRUE” feral will still see Furor as viable because of the rage gain. Even though there are many changes to the feral tree that make you”pick” between cat and bear I can still se myself having to tank when my talents may be a little more cat then bear and I wouldn’t give furor up for anything when pulling with no rage.

I hope there are more changes and tweaks to come for ferals besides the addition of Mother Bear and Natural Reaction. Currently however, the biggest issue ferals face is not in the feral tree, but the restoration tree. To achieve maximum potential a feral druid must invest 16 talent points into the resto tree. This doesn’t leave enough to purchase all the relevant talents in the feral tree to be fully effective at either cat or bear.

5/5 Furor: Previously a bread-and-butter feral talent; Furor will become less useful to ferals with the elimination of powershifting. Unfortunately we still have to purchase it to get past tier 1. Solution: Move it to tier 1 in the Balance tree as a 2 or 3 point talent, or scrap it entirely to make room for other changes.

5/5 Naturalist: 10% increased physical damage… in the resto tree? Why? Coupled with… a casting time reduction on Healing Touch? Why? What do these two things even have in common? This talent has never made sense. Solution: Scrap this talent altogether. Increase base damage of druid physical attacks by +10% across the board, or roll it into the much-more-appropriately-themed but little-used Feral Aggression. If anyone still cares about the casting time of HT, then further reduce it through the new glyph and put this confused talent to rest.

3/3 Natural Shapeshifter: This talent will also become less useful when ferals can no longer convert mana into energy to produce additional damage via powershifting. Depending on itemization it may still prove moderately useful, if only because future feral/rogue gear that will likely lack Int. Regardless, we must spend points here in order to get to…

2/2 Master Shapeshifter: Awesome talent, great idea… poor location. Something obviously intended to be useful to all specs should be made more accessable to feral and balance. Solution? Move both Natural and Master Shapeshifter to tier 1 and connect them with a horizontal prerequisite arrow.

1/1 Omen of Clarity: Cool implementation to create a mechanic that will make some stats more scaleable for ferals. I am curious to see how it works out. Again this talent is obviously intended to be highly useful for all three specs, yet it is all the way down in tier 3. Solution: Move OoC up to tier 2. Move Nature’s Focus (a more resto-oriented talent) from tier 1 to tier 2 to fill the gap left by deleting Naturalist and moving Natural Shapeshifter.

Now we’d be looking at 6 useful points for all specs available right at the top of the resto tree. That would free up 10 points to use for essential talents in the feral tree.

Sacrificing power shifting in favor of being able to have 100 energy whenever I shift into cat form before a fight (if I understand the mechanics right) seems totally worth it. It should also mean that I will have full energy if I’m going Bear -> Cat, which happens quite a lot in 25-man PvE. I like that change. Power shifting was a “broken” thing anyway IMO and now with Berserk and the revamped Tiger’s Fury (with King of the Jungle) we have other means to keep our dps up.

I do agree that “having” to invest all those points into the resto tree is a bit annoying. Personally I’ve currently 14 points in there: 5/5 Furor, 5/5 Naturalist, 3/3 Intensity (10 extra instant rage is useful when tanking) and 1/1 Omen of Clarity. But looking at the current beta talents I’m much more likely to reduce that to 11 points by sacrificing 3/3 Intensity. Natural Shapeshifter hardly seems worth it and 5 points just to get 4% crit as cat and 4% extra damage as bear does not seem worth it with so many new and improved talents in the feral tree, I can’t even find points for Rend and Tear, which I think would be more beneficial then Natural + Master Shapeshifter.

But every time I sit down and try to plan out a spec I seem to come up with something different. They sure seem to have succeeded in making it impossible to get all the good cat talents if you want all the good tank talents this time. Here’s the latest one I came up with, main focus is tanking, but with a few more dps centric talents taken as well

I hope this doesn’t come off as rude, but as a rogue main, feral alt player this was never right to begin with. All too often I see ferals saying they want equal DPS to rogues and that is not how it should be. A hybrid class should be just that. Being able to main tank, main DPS and main heal all with the same toon would be the extinction of the game because no other class would be viable any longer. Cat DPS should always be evidently lower, Bear abilities should always be more limited. Feral is 2-for-1 as it is, they should not be able to master both and heal to boot. Unless you are ok with resto rogue tanks JM2C

@Graylo and Nymphia: Oh, I didn’t realize the talent investments worked that way. *blush* I’m glad that it will still be a popular choice, then.

@Idahoe: I can see why some Ferals would feel relieved to no longer have to bother with powershifting. I know I never really got the hang of it on my baby Feral.

@Archmera: Haha … I’m glad you liked it.

@Runycat: Thanks for commenting with your insight. More button mashing is good though, right? You’re getting to use more abilities more frequently?

@Abagoo: Hopefully the split between Cat and Bear talents will still give the Druid the ability to switch between specs during raids (with the two template ability they’ve promised).

@Padwar: Great breakdown of the Restoration talents that augment Ferals. I agree that Naturalist is a bizarre combination of abilities, but I think the idea of pairing them up was so that Ferals who do have to heal have a 3.0 sec Healing Touch to use. In the past, the worse your gear was for healing, the more you would have to rely on your direct heal, Healing Touch, so I can appreciate it from that standpoint. I love the idea of moving Natural Shapeshifter/Master Shapehifter into Tier 1. that would be incredibly helpful for Balance Druids, too, although they’d still have to look at how to invest to acquire Intensity.

@Oni: Are you sure you can afford to cut out the 4% crit from Master Shapeshifter with the reduction to crit Cats are seeing because of the changes to Agility?

@Silent: In WotLK where players have 71 talent points to invest, specialization is ever more important. Blizzard is deliberately forcing Ferals to choose between Bear and Cat specs, so I hope you won’t mind if they opt to boost Cat DPS to a level closer to that of a Rogue’s. They’ve at least acknowledged that Cat DPS in live right now is abysmal. I’m hoping to see Cats reach 90% of a Rogue’s DPS when fully cat-specced while still retaining some decent ability to offtank if needed. And there are no Cats/Bears out there that “main heal” in the same raid. You seem to think that Druids are the only ones built this way, but don’t forget that Paladins have similar capabilities (melee DPS, healing, tanking), and the game isn’t extinct yet!

I’m far from sure. I’m really torn about it. But with main focus on tanking I think I just can’t afford to move that many points over there for it. I also would want full points in infected wounds (reducing incoming white damage is always good), missing out on faerie fire hurt and I actually like brutal impact when tanking (non-bleeding CC, for that broken sheep that a mage may need a few extra seconds to get under control), when soloing (more damage done before pounce stun runs out) and for PvP (well, it’s a stun).

Unlike how the talent tree looks right now I actually feel like I have to make some decisions about my spec that will have some major impact, and it’s fun to try out different specs in these calculators and try to find that sweet spot. But I’m not really losing any sleep over this until they are final, since talents may appear, disappear or change “size” (how many points you can/must invest).

I’m just “happy” that Rend and Tear isn’t too appealing so I can skip it. But I suspect that may change it… Actually, as I type this up I just remembered that there’s a glyph that increases the duration of Rip with 4 seconds which should mean it should be no problem keeping Rip up at all times. That means Rend and Tear should give a pretty much constant 10% damage bonus for Shred. Dangit, now I’m torn about that one…

@Oni: Great comments. I’m afraid that I don’t really have much to add as a non-Feral. I guess we should really hold out hope that Blizzard goes through with their plan to allow an alternate spec so that Ferals can continue to play Cat/Bear the same way that many Restos/Boomkin will spec swap due to those two pairs of specs essentially making use of the same set of gear.